Way too early question: What are your expectations for next season? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Way too early question: What are your expectations for next season?

ShakyTheMohel said:
That's what I thought..then I had a bad case of deja vu. I think "not blown out by halftime" was my hope for last season.
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This was my hope for last year too. Win 3-4 games and just be competitive in the rest. Outside of Clemson, I wanted to see us be in the game and have a chance to win for a good chunk of it. Didn't happen.....

So this upcoming year, here's what I want to see:

1) Crush CCSU by 20+. Let's finally beat a FCS like we should.
2) Win 2 more games. FIU and UMass are the two I'm looking at on the schedule as possible wins. Nothing is a "winnable" game anymore with this team.
3) Stay competitive in the games we should be competitive in and maybe pull off a random win.

I'd love to see these things. I'm not being naive. No way we go from what we were this year to magically winning 4-5 games. I think 3 is possible. I just want enjoyable football!
 
UCFBfan said:
This was my hope for last year too. Win 3-4 games and just be competitive in the rest. Outside of Clemson, I wanted to see us be in the game and have a chance to win for a good chunk of it. Didn't happen.....

So this upcoming year, here's what I want to see:

1) Crush CCSU by 20+. Let's finally beat a FCS like we should.
2) Win 2 more games. FIU and UMass are the two I'm looking at on the schedule as possible wins. Nothing is a "winnable" game anymore with this team.
3) Stay competitive in the games we should be competitive in and maybe pull off a random win.

I'd love to see these things. I'm not being naive. No way we go from what we were this year to magically winning 4-5 games. I think 3 is possible. I just want enjoyable football!
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If we had gone 5-7 this year it wouldn't have been a miracle. We blew it against Vandy and Wyoming and couldn't close the deal against lesser opponents in HC and UMass.
 
With UConn Football, I have learned to develop no expectations. It’s probably a defense mechanism to avoid disappointment.
I believe the AD tried to offer an early way to buy or reserve season tickets, capitalizing on the Mora hire.
If that is correct, did anyone locked their tickets up early? That would be the real poll.
 
Well ... let's see who comes from the portal. The Feb signing period may provide some great prospects but no one likely to play right away, or at least make a big impact. UConn won one game this year and is losing its best player on each side of the ball. So as it stands now they could go 0-12. That is a definite possibility. But I think that 2 or 3 wins would be more realistic. I am quite sure that respected professional observers would fall into this range. The lower end of the "exceeds expectations" range would be 4 wins. Four wins would represent a sea change and trigger unbridled enthusiam and bowling predictions in 2023 on this board.

Zero possibility of getting 5 wins or more.
 
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I know we’ve been beaten down as a fan base, but only two wins would be a failure by HCJM. That would show no improvement to me. Zero. Three would be a passing grade, but still a disappointment. I expect 4 or more. Period. That’s really the only thing that would show me improvement.
 
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06029 said:
This sounds so much like RutgersAl.

what are the 8 winnable games and why are they winnable?
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Pretty much the entire schedule is winnable outside of Michigan and maybe Fresno. Syracuse sucks, NC State seems to play to the level of their opponent, BC is BC, Army is decent but is a winnable game, CCSU is a gimme game, Utah St is the first game of the season so it's very much winnable for both teams, FIU pretty much wants to close it's football program and it shows and UMass will be a competitive game, but I believe we have the edge with coaching.
 
Comparative to recent seasons- anything north of 3 wins is Nirvana
 
uconndogs said:
I would put the eggnog down for a bit.

drunk saturday night live GIF
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Nobody in their right mind puts down eggnog. Nobody.
 
CL82 said:
I thought about making this a poll, but I really don’t want to limit people’s answers. I think the last decade has taught us to be less unbridled in our enthusiasm. I am drinking the Jim Mora Kool-Aid by the pitcher. I like his hires and I am hopeful for the future. There really is no way to know how much improvement we could possibly have until we see the end results from the transfer portal, but so far what do you think would be “acceptable change?”
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3-5 wins.
 
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FIU and CCSU are wins. Lose to UMASS, Liberty, Ball State, Utah State by 10-14 points. Michigan by 35 points, and BC/NC St/Fresno/Syracuse/Army by 24-30 points.

We double the win production from 2021 and Mora demands a raise since the "cupboard was bare" when he got here.
 
DoctorWho85 said:
Pretty much the entire schedule is winnable outside of Michigan and maybe Fresno. Syracuse sucks, NC State seems to play to the level of their opponent, BC is BC, Army is decent but is a winnable game, CCSU is a gimme game, Utah St is the first game of the season so it's very much winnable for both teams, FIU pretty much wants to close it's football program and it shows and UMass will be a competitive game, but I believe we have the edge with coaching.
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So UMass is a harder game than the 3 ACC teams and Army?
 
A lot depends on the qb transfers. Qb can cover up a lot of issues so if one of them can really play I’m not ruling out 4+ wins. If qb play is the same or only a slight improvement I’d say 2-3.
 
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DoctorWho85 said:
Pretty much the entire schedule is winnable outside of Michigan and maybe Fresno. Syracuse sucks, NC State seems to play to the level of their opponent, BC is BC, Army is decent but is a winnable game, CCSU is a gimme game, Utah St is the first game of the season so it's very much winnable for both teams, FIU pretty much wants to close it's football program and it shows and UMass will be a competitive game, but I believe we have the edge with coaching.
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Such good satire.

In reality, I think we are looking good for 2-3 wins. But my expectations are a professionally run organization, with no embarrassing retirement/resignations after the first game, no losses to FCS teams or worse, and hopefully no national laughingstock losses.

I would be ecstatic over this result.
 
Moving the ball on offense with play calls that aren’t from 5-10 (or 20+) years ago. Scoring points against opponents 1’s. Making stops on defense and putting pressure on their QB more than a few times a game. Making less stupid mistakes / penalties. These things should all contribute to more competitive games that are much more fun to watch.

If that translates to 3-5 wins I’d be pleasantly surprised with year one of HCJM. If it’s less than 3 wins then I’d be a bit disappointed.
 
4 makes most people happy if there is a bowl game the following year. Anything less is UConn is still a dumpster fire. I will repeat that there is little difference in talent between us and half the teams on our schedule. Coaching and commitment from the players to be better is all it takes.
 
bmayuc said:
Such good satire.

In reality, I think we are looking good for 2-3 wins. But my expectations are a professionally run organization, with no embarrassing retirement/resignations after the first game, no losses to FCS teams or worse, and hopefully no national laughingstock losses.

I would be ecstatic over this result.
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I hope that we won't be in the bottom 10 next year. It was funny at first, but not at the end...
 
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Fair question but I’m going to wait a while. I’m not one who thinks we went 1-11 because game day coaching was holding back players who were much better than 1-11 players. I think we had a severe talent deficit.

So predicting next year’s record, for me, requires seeing what we can get in the portal and Juco ranks to make both lines better. The kid from Dartmouth is a start, but upgrading the skill players on offense, which we’ve done at QB and TB (and WR may be the strongest group of players he is inheriting), isn’t going to make us much better unless we block and have enough speed on the DL to not give opposing QBs who escape the pocket enough time to surf the internet before deciding to run or throw.
 
freescooter said:
Wow. Talk @bout drinking coolaide by the bucket. I see maybe 2 games right now we should win. Maybe 2 I’d call toss ups. After that, we need to improve a lot. I think it takes a year to get things right. I’ll say 3-9.
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I think we win 6 or 7 games with 2 being lucky wins, and I don’t think we get blown out by anyone. Only question is what bowl, if any, do we get invited too. I would also predict post season honors for Kevon Jones, and Jackson Mitchell. The key to my prediction is how well Mora and his assistants can shore up the offensive line. Young players like Brewton, Burns, Tyler (if 100%) will shine if Mora can accomplish that. An improvement in the offensive line would also give Krajewski time throw and make better decisions when he’s in for Tyler. Mora also has a huge hole to fill with Travis leaving.
 
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I think bowl predictions at this stage are way off base, but it's nice to see the hope back on the boards. This is a team that lost to UMass in a game that was less competitive and more frustrating than the final score. It lost to Holy Cross, it had its doors blown off by Army (whom folks have derided as not being very good) with the guy everyone hoped would be the starter (prior to the most recent transfer) running the offense. Yes they were surprisingly competitive against Wyoming and Vanderbilt, but they were also in a competitive game against Yale.

I think Biz is correct, we just don't know if the talent upgrade has been enough. There are massive deficiencies on both lines. The offensive line was the worst unit on a bad team last year, fixing that may in and of itself "fix" the offense. The defense, while it seemed to get better during the season (although some teams started to play more vanilla against UConn later in the year) still had issues stopping the run up the middle, pressuring the QB, setting the edge, and tackling in the secondary. Pretty much every aspect of the defense must get better and the team will graduate its best player on that side of the field.

I think some of what people are seeing is there are a few offensive skill players who were pretty flashy and did some great things, but UConn's worst talent was on the offensive line, the position I believe, that is the most important one on the field. It wasn't just bad... it was below FBS level caliber. They need a huge talent infusion here and we're excited because there are FCS graduate transfers coming in to upgrade the offensive line... that may be big compared to the current talent-level, but is also an indictment on last year's offensive line than anything else (which isn't to say that I'm not thrilled to be adding players who are massive upgrades).

We may have growing pains learning new systems and getting everyone in place. I just think there are too many unknowns to expect the massive jump in performance some folks are expecting that it would take to get to go from 1 to 6 wins. I'm hopeful, but I certainly wouldn't predict it, and wouldn't declare it a failure if the club fails to win 6 games year one.

I expect 2-3 wins; anything more than that would make me happy (year one). Less and I'd be pretty disappointed. I expect to be able to happy to be watching more games that are competitive (and hopefully a CCSU game that is not competitive in UConn's favor) and not completely frustrated watching a defense fail in even the basics, or an offensive line that is completely overmatched.
 
Let’s be realistic. 3-4 wins with minimal blow outs (1-2 max) will make everyone here happy. There is still a severe talent deficit in the program (Edsall had 1 top 100 recruiting class), and coaching will only take the team so far. Mora’s recruited well but there hasn’t been an influx of transfers that’ll transform this roster into a competitive one overnight. As long as I see creative and aggressive play calling on both sides of the ball and a team that doesn’t quit I’ll be optimistic about the future.

Maybe the team sneaks into a bowl game at 6-6 next year, but I think year 3 is a good target for getting bowl eligible. Think of how the Hurley rebuild went, you saw glimmers of hope in the first 2 seasons and year 3 you saw the process start to pay off.
 
2022 : 3-9
2023 : 5-7
2024 : 7-5

I think we’re gradually going to get better. This isn’t UCLA. We aren’t in the PAC12 loaded with talent on the west coast. We’ll be better than we were and heading in the right direction towards bowl eligibility but will take a couple years to get there. If the transfer portal is abused by our staff and we get talent here that wants PT I think we can be an interesting program to watch/play for.
 
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